Darwin Industry - Darwin's Manuscripts and Correspondence

Darwin's Manuscripts and Correspondence

One of the most significant projects of the Darwin Industry has been the systematic publication of all of Darwin's unpublished writings. Two volumes of the Life and Letters of Charles Darwin were published in 1887 along with The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, edited by Francis Darwin; two volumes of More Letters of Charles Darwin were published in 1902. Francis Darwin edited 1909 editions of Darwin's notebooks related to the inception of his theory. Darwin's granddaughter Nora Barlow pieced together the 1930 Diary of the Beagle from Darwin's unpublished notebooks. A flood of Darwiniana was published in the mid-twentieth century, especially by Darwin's descendents, leading up to the 1959 Darwin Centennial, including an un-redacted edition of Darwin's autobiography edited by Barlow. However, all this made up only a fraction of Darwin's correspondence and other unpublished writings, and much of what was published was incomplete. By the 1990s there were two different versions of The Works of Charles Darwin, an 18 volume edition by AMS Press and a more scholarly 29 volume edition by William Pickering, along with an annotated scholarly volume of Charles Darwin 's Notebooks, 1836-1844.

More significantly, two projects now make most of the primary material relating to Darwin available. Since 1974 the Darwin Correspondence Project has been locating, annotating and publishing the complete surviving correspondence of Darwin, including sixteen volumes (of an expected 30) published between 1985 and 2008 (covering the letters through 1868). An online database makes notes and transcripts of latters available online. The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online makes available all of Darwin's print publications, private papers and manuscripts, together with a growing number of supplementary works. Earlier volumes of published letters are included, but it does not duplicate the Correspondence Project publications. It began in 2002 as a pilot website, The writings of Charles Darwin on the web, and in October 2006 it was launched internationally as a new website. It is claimed to be the largest and most widely used Darwin resource ever created.